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A big umbrella

Marty DeVarennes
Nov 9, 2016
2 min read

I tell my students that nonfiction is "written to give information" and I feel that description pretty much sums up how to determine IF a title is nonfiction. However, it certainly does not come close to evaluating the wide variety of nonfiction titles. We must rely on the authority of the authors, so titles should really include a bibliography. Many authors describe their research process in an appendix, like Rick Bowers does in the exceptional expository work Spies of Mississippi.

Biographies of course, are a familiar form of nonfiction. I was a huge fan of biographies as an intermediate student, and I loved learning about the lives of people I admired. I also loved the photographs and returned to them frequently. Autobiographies and memoirs also fall under this category. If you refer to my graphic novel post, you'll see an example of a also see an example of a graphic biography about Jackie Robinson. Sisters (see my review) is an example of a memoir, also in a graphic format.

Narrative nonfiction tells about real events in a narrative format. Rosa by Nikki Giovanni, with beautiful illustrations from Bryan Collier, tells the story of Rosa Parks' historic bus ride. The Pot That Juan Built tells the story of artisan Juan Quezada, whose pottery helped his small Chihuahan village develop into a flourishing artistic community. The important thing about these books is that they are true stories of actual events.

Probably the broadest category of nonfiction would be expository books. If you consider that the root of expository is expose, well, that's what these books do. These encompass many of the nonfiction titles on library shelves. History books like Hitler's Youth by Susan C. Bartoletti exposes how children in Nazi Germany were expected to be young soldiers to follow in Hitler's footsteps. Nic Bishop's wonderful animal books are examples of expository books. These books explain the facts, and the variety of topics and formats are endless.

But as librarians, it is up to us to make sure that the nonfiction materials in our collections are reliable references for our students, as well as diverse. Some topics will be controversial and as protectors of students' rights to intellectual freedom, we have a responsibility to include quality books about topics that may be challenging.